


Changed and unchanged

by msmorland



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 11:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: “Who are you and what have you done with the real Jordan Virtue?” Tessa said, only half joking. “Are you telling me you think I actually should...make a move on Scott?”(Or, the one in which Tessa seeks some sisterly wisdom.)





	Changed and unchanged

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this little Tessa-POV snippet a while ago, but it's been languishing in my fics folder because I couldn't come up with a title for it. I finally thought of one, so here you go.

“I thought the point of having so many therapists,” Jordan said when Tessa picked up the phone, “was that we wouldn’t be having The Scott Conversation anymore.”

Tessa groaned. It was 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday, the one day she didn’t have to be up early to train. When she’d asked Jordan to call her back, she hadn’t meant _call me back first thing on my day off_.

That was Jordan for you.

“You’ve had your revenge with this way-too-early phone call,” she said, forcing herself to sit up. “But Jordan, I can’t talk to the therapists about this.”

 _This_ was the enormity of her feelings for one Scott Moir. The therapists were there to help them do one thing: get to another Olympics and win it. Tessa’s feelings for Scott had no place in that two-year plan. They had promised each other: No distractions.

“Oh, Tessa,” Jordan sighed, all the teasing gone from her voice. “What did you do?”

* * *

Tessa hadn’t done anything. Really. She had done nothing and then, one day, it was like she was 13 again, on fire every time Scott touched her, giggling at everything he said, shivering every time he kissed her neck or spoke into her ear.

Which was a problem, because he did those things All. The. Time.

She’d tried compartmentalizing. She’d tried convincing herself it was nothing—just a product of being back in his company all the time, skating the kinds of programs they skated, having to rely on each other in a new city the way they hadn’t since Canton. They were both single for the first time in years, and that would create the occasional charged moment for anyone. (Wouldn’t it?)

But she didn’t think it was nothing. She was afraid it was, in fact, a major something. And so the SOS to Jordan, who might tease her but was still the only person Tessa could imagine going to for this conversation. Unlike all the people who speculated about them online, Jordan knew who Tessa and Scott were—if not as well, sometimes, as they knew each other—and she knew how intensely, confusingly intertwined their lives were.

“I know I’m being an idiot,” Tessa said now, after she’d finished relaying all of this and before Jordan could say it first. “I just...don’t know how to turn it off.”

When she was 13, it had gone away on its own, as soon as that first rush of hormones had passed and Tessa remembered that he was just _Scott_ , the same boy she’d spent nearly every day with since she was seven years old. There was no reason to blush and giggle around him. 

But now the _he’s just Scott_ mantra had lost its power. If anything, it had the opposite effect. Tessa sometimes caught herself looking at him in wonder: This man next to her on the ice was that same Scott, with a new maturity and focus to him she didn’t remember from before. She had always known that she was precious to him, but there was something newly sincere about how he conveyed that now. It warmed her from the inside out.

Tessa expected Jordan to have some big-sister way of talking her down, of talking her out of the leap Tessa was sure she was stupid to even be contemplating. That was why she had called Jordan in the first place. (Wasn’t it?)

So she was stunned when Jordan said instead, quietly, “Maybe you’re not supposed to turn it off.” 

Tessa couldn’t say anything. She almost wished they were on Skype, so Jordan could see the way Tessa’s mouth hung open in astonishment, the way she’d theatrically pulled her phone away from her face. 

“Tess?”

“Who are you and what have you done with the real Jordan Virtue?” Tessa said, only half joking. “Are you telling me you think I actually should...make a move on Scott? On _Scott_?”

Scott, who had spent much of the last decade in and out of tumultuous relationships. Who had always ended things at the first sign that his girlfriend of the moment was looking for a real commitment. She’d tried to imagine a relationship between them, but she’d never been able to picture that skittish Scott in the kind of life she wanted.

Now, though. Now he seemed different to her, and Tessa wasn’t sure if she was a fool for daring to imagine all of that again. For thinking maybe enough had changed.

Jordan sighed. “Do I think it’s the least complicated thing you could ever do? No. But listen, Tess. You’ve been wondering about this for so long. How else will you ever figure it out?”

* * *

Sunday was her day off from the rink, but not from Scott. They used to take advantage of it, the time they had apart off-ice, but lately their old boundaries had been fading. Now they had brunch most Sundays, Scott letting himself into Tessa’s apartment with his spare key, determined to save her—as he put it—from yet another meal of poached eggs. (She _did_ eat other things, really, but it was true they weren’t things she cooked herself.)

So an hour after she hung up with Jordan, she wasn’t surprised to hear Scott’s key clicking in her front door. For once, she was up and dressed, lounging on the couch, when he came in with groceries, and Scott startled when he saw her. Then he leaned into the joke, putting a hand theatrically on his chest.

“Are you...awake?” he said.

“Very funny,” Tessa said, trying to sound stern and giggling instead, the way she almost always did with Scott. Her giggles were a tell—Jordan had been saying so since she was a teenager—but Tessa was helpless to stop them. “What’s for breakfast?”

Scott shifted his grocery bag behind his back. “Oh, and who says I brought breakfast?”

Tessa rolled her eyes and then, before Scott could anticipate her move, lunged for the bag Scott was hiding.

She reached around his back for it and he grabbed her around the waist, and they spun around her living room in an accidental lift for a minute, until they were both laughing too hard to keep up the hold.

“What’s gotten into you?” Scott was saying as he set her down, still laughing. “First you’re awake, then you’re _attacking me_ —”

Tessa kissed him.

For a moment they both stood still, an end-of-dance pose.

Then the bag of groceries thunked to the ground behind her and Scott’s hands came to rest at her hips.

He was kissing her back.

Their coaches had always taught them to work for their moments—to feel the music, to understand the story in order to generate that necessary connection with each other. But no, Tessa thought now, hazily, as she wound her arms around Scott’s neck, letting herself play with the ends of his hair. They’d had to work for plenty of things in the course of their partnership, but that electrical charge at the root of it? That had been there from the beginning.

She’d spent so much time trying to deny it. Maybe the answer was to stop denying. To finally trust her instincts.

“Tess…” Scott breathed as he pulled back.

She met his eyes. She recognized the expression in them, one she saw often before they took the ice at competitions—nervousness mixed with excitement mixed with determination.

“Scott, I—” Tessa said. She stopped. She wanted to get this right.

“I want to get this right,” she said.

Scott looked at her, lifting a hand to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. It did funny things to Tessa's heart.

“Get what right, T?”

“Everything,” Tessa said.

She knew she could never be like Scott’s other girlfriends, the ones he’d stayed with only until they wanted more. She and Scott were only just beginning, and already she wanted more. She wanted everything.

Scott smiled.

He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. Their second real kiss, and already it felt like their hundredth.

“You know what, T?” he said. “I think we did.”


End file.
